Peer-to-peer communication, and in fact all types of communication, depend on the possibility of establishing valid connections between selected entities. These entities may be peers (e.g., users or machines) or groups formed within a peer-to-peer network. However, entities may have one or several addresses that may vary because the entities move in the network, because the topology changes, because an address lease cannot be renewed, because the group function or purpose has changed, etc. A classic architectural solution to this addressing problem is thus to assign to each entity a stable name, and to “resolve” this name to a current address when a connection is needed. This name to address translation must be very robust, and it must also allow for easy and fast updates.
To increase the likelihood that an entity's address may be found by those seeking to connect to it, many peer-to-peer protocols allow entities to publish their individual or group address(es) through various mechanisms. Some protocols also allow a client to acquire knowledge of other entities' addresses through the processing of requests from others in the network. Indeed, it is this acquisition of address knowledge that enables successful operation of these peer-to-peer networks. That is, the better the information about other peers and groups in the network, the greater the likelihood that a search for a particular resource will converge.
However, without a simple and robust mechanism that allows a user to easily establish and manage this single or these various identities that are to be used in the P2P network, users will be unable to take advantage of the benefits of the such networks. That is, the creation of P2P identities requires that numerous individual pieces of information be created and associated together in a consistent and logical fashion. This creation and association includes the creation of a friendly name, the selection and generation of a public/private key pair, the creation of an identity certificate (IDC) in coordination with the key pair, the association the IDC into the P2P infrastructure, the association of that with the name resolution protocol identities, etc. Each of these tasks alone are complex, and it is unlikely that the casual user would be able to properly create and/or associate this information in a manner that would ensure fruitful participation in the P2P network.
Even if a user were able to properly create and associate the required information to form a P2P identity that would allow for successful resolution and participation in the P2P network, such participation would be constrained to a single physical location. While this may not seem to be a problem, the nature of mobile computing today, and of the mobility of users, renders such constraints undesirable. This problem is particularly troublesome as a user desires to maintain his or her on-line persona regardless of where the user is physically located or onto which computing device the user is logged.
Within the public P2P cloud there may also exist private groups of peers who have associated with one another for a given purpose. Membership in such groups is typically governed by some form of group certificate that is associated with a particular P2P identity. Communications within the group is typically limited to user identities who can present the proper credentials. Therefore, it is important for a user identity to be able to properly associate with the group certificate. However, since there is no limitation on how many groups a particular P2P identity may belong, it become critical to manage not only the various identities that a user may use in the P2P cloud, but also the group membership certificates associated with each of the appropriate identities. Currently, however, no such identity management exists.